Relentless (16 page)

    “I’m not even marshal anymore, Sandra.”

    This was obviously news to her. She became a girl again, a curious one. “How come?”

    “Because some important people in town think my wife Callie killed Stanton. So I had to quit.”

    “Those important people be Grice and Toomey?”

    “Yeah. Pretty much.”

    “My dad hates them almost as much as he hates Paul.”

    She raised her head and looked at the sun. Apparently she could tell by its position just about what time it was. “I better get back to where us kids’re staying. I just come over here to get some clean clothes.”

    “Well, if he isn’t here, I guess I might as well head back.” She eyed me steadily. “He didn’t kill Stanton.”

    I paused and said, “It’s good to see you again, Sandra. And I’m sorry about your mother.”

    “Maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself if you hadn’t come out here.”

    It was funny, and it didn’t say much for the instincts I prided myself on, but she was so soft-spoken that I hadn’t realized till just then that she hated me. Genuinely and truly hated me. Not only did I suspect her father in Stanton’s murder. But I just might have pushed her mother into suicide.

    “I’ve wondered about that myself, Sandra.”

    “My dad, he thinks you as much as killed her yourself.”

    “I don’t think that’s true. Not in the daylight I don’t. But I guess late at night when I think about things-I sure hope I didn’t push her into it. I tried to get in to stop her, but I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me in.”

    “Maybe you shouldn’t ought to have been out here in the first place.” She hefted her clothes and walked away.

    I wanted to say more, exonerate myself in her eyes-maybe, more importantly, exonerate myself in my own eyes-but all I could do was let her walk away.

    

    

    I turned my horse toward the road leading to town and headed off. I wanted her to see me go. I didn’t want her to suspect what I had in mind.

    I rode maybe a quarter mile, then guided my horse into some shallow timberland, keeping in the shadows of aspen and pin oak so that nobody could see me if they were glancing down the road.

    When I got near the Adams place, I tied my animal to a tree limb and went the rest of the way on foot, pausing before I walked out into the clearing around the cabin. I wanted to make sure she was gone.

    No sign of her or her horse.

    The cabin was unlocked. The inside was orderly but poor. The best feature was the plank floor. There were two narrow mattresses piled on each other. I assumed these belonged to the girls. They slept on the floor at night.

    The one big room smelled of coffee and whiskey. Adams had done as much drinking last night as I had.

    What I was hoping to find was a diary or letters of some kind. A lot of women kept diaries to record what life was like out here. They also wrote a lot of letters back home. And received a lot of letters. Maybe Adams’s wife had exchanged intimate letters with Stanton-I knew I was desperate, but I didn’t have much choice at this point.

    I was just opening the bureau when I heard the cabin door squawk open behind me and a familiar voice say, “I could shoot you right here and right now and tell everybody I thought you was a robber. Seeing’s how you ain’t marshal no more.”

    She’d seen through me pretty damn well, Sandra had.

    I turned and faced her. Her Winchester led the way into the cabin. “You going to shoot me?”

    “You think this is funny?”

    “Not at all. I’m nervous, you pointing that repeater at me.

    “You should be nervous. You ain’t got no right to be in here.”

    “How about if I just leave?”

    “What were you lookin’ for?”

    “Nothing in particular.”

    “You think he killed Stanton?”

    “I think it’s a possibility.”

    “What if I said
I
killed him?”

    “I wouldn’t believe you.”

    “Maybe I was so sick of seein’ my ma cheat on him that I killed Stanton myself. You should’ve seen what it did to him. He’d vomit all the time. And cry. Me ’n my little brother’d just hold him, try to help him. But there wasn’t no help for him, he loved her so much.” She paused. “I wanted to kill her. One night I even took a shot at her.”

    “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

    “So maybe I killed Stanton.”

    “Maybe you think your dad killed Stanton. Maybe that’s why you’re telling me all this.”

    “He didn’t.”

    “He ever hit your mother?”

    “Just once. And I honestly think it hurt him more ’n hurt her. Afterward, he got drunk and went out to that oak tree to the west and kept hittin’ till he broke his hand.”

    “That was the only time?”

    “The only time.”

    There was still no real emotion in her voice. Flat, just relating facts. You had to read all the misery and terror and conflict into her words yourself. You could hear the kids crying and screaming, and the two adults arguing, both of them trying to understand why she did what she did, cursed somehow in a way neither of them could fathom or do anything about.

    “I loved her and I hated her. Sometimes at the same time. And I feel guilty about that now. I shoulda just loved her. She was my mom.”

    “People can confuse you sometimes.”

    “You ever loved and hated the same person?”

    “Sure.”

    “It’s hell, isn’t it?”

    And just then, in a way that was both adult and childlike at the same time, her voice quavered and conveyed her confusion and sorrow. And I went over to her and took the rifle and set it down on a table and let her come into my arms. She still didn’t cry. She just wanted to be held, and I just wanted to be held, and so we stood like that for just a few minutes, strangers, but comfortable with each other for a tiny clock-strike of time, and then she moved away from me and said, “He didn’t kill her, Marshal. I just keep thinkin’ of my kid brother. If the law took my dad away to prison-or hanged him-”

    There was nothing I could say except: “I don’t think he did it, Sandra.”

    “You mean that really?”

    “Yeah. I do.” I handed her her rifle. “C’mon, I’ll walk you outside. You need to take those clean clothes over, and I need to get to town.”

    “What’s in town?”

    “The lieutenant governor,” I said.

    “My dad says he’s a crook.”

    I laughed. “Your dad is a wise man.”

    

    

    I HAD TO hand it to Grice and Toomey. They had managed to work up so much enthusiasm for Lieutenant Governor Bryce Fuller’s visit that at least half the town turned out that sweaty afternoon at the railroad depot. Abe Lincoln couldn’t have done much better by returning from the grave.

    Miners, merchants, gentry ladies, farm wives, ex-convicts, preachers, noisy children, deaf old men-everybody mobbed the depot platform and the ground parallel to the tracks as the train came churning in.

    In the lot adjacent to the depot you saw a similar spectrum of vehicles-fancy surreys, a hansom or two, dusty buckboards, and all forms of bicycles. Even a honey wagon on which adamant black flies the size of knuckles were having their own celebration.

    The brass band started playing patriotic songs, and many in the crowd began to sing along. A peacock disguised as a human male conducted the band with a flawlessly florid style that impressed some and made others giggle. I couldn’t watch him. It was embarrassing.

    One other thing was embarrassing, too. The way people watched me. Another spectrum-this one ranging from the hatred of those I’d in some way offended during my tenure as town marshal to pity from those I’d done right by. Nods, fingers pointing in my direction, whispers. The wearer of a scarlet letter couldn’t have been any less prominent than I was in that crowd.

    But then the train pulled into the station, deep in so that the caboose came even with the depot doors. The handiwork of Grice and Toomey could even be seen here. The caboose was all decked out in red, white, and blue bunting. It looked like a refugee train car from a political convention back East where the candidates liked to combine politics with aspects of circus.

    Even small towns like Skylar attracted nationally known celebrities and speakers as they swept through the West promoting their books or elixirs or controversial beliefs. They were, for the most part, slick, literate, and effective speakers. And they helped banish the old style of Western politician, the sincere immigrant who had simple but sound ideas for local or territorial government and stated those ideas without fuss or subterfuge.

    No longer. If you wanted to run for any kind of important office, even a big city local office, you had to be at least half as slick and literate and effective a speaker as the nationally known folks who had been by within recent memory. And the same for your appearance. You had to be all suited up and tidy. And you had to be wily with your gestures and your posturing. You didn’t want too much in your speech or your mannerisms; otherwise you’d look like the band conductor. On the other hand, you didn’t want to stand up there and mutter and mumble and look cowed. One of the state newspapers had even said that a few of the major state politicians had hired the services of drama teachers to help them perform better on the stump.

    Whatever else he was-a man of empty words, a man with an open palm for anybody who wanted to lay greenbacks on it, a man who had proved useful to just about every sinister vested interest in the state-Bryce Fuller was a talented performer. He had the looks for it, that rocking-chair-on-the-porch white-haired amiability of grandfathers everywhere; the frank, blue-eyed gaze of a man you could trust; and teeth so damned white they could blind you if he chose to smile into direct sunlight. He was big but not fat; handsome but not pretty; well-dressed but not dandified. The women loved him, but their husbands didn’t have to worry about him trying to get into the knickers of either wives or daughters.

    Within two seconds of the caboose coming to a stop- the locomotive all scorching steam and hot oil and searing steel-Grice stood on one side of Fuller and Toomey on the other.

    The band was ear-numbing in its fervor now; so was the crowd. It applauded, whistled, stomped. It sang, it screeched, it screamed. An arthritic old man, perhaps insane, broke out into some kind of jig. A matronly woman, dazzled by the sight of Fuller, touched her bosom in a most suggestive way. And a man blinded in that long-ago blue-gray war of ours had tears streaming down his cheeks. I could not tell you why.

    Frenzy. That was the only word for it. And Grice and Toomey were swollen with the moment even more than Fuller, who had probably had so many moments like this that they’d become routine, maybe even a little dull.

    It took Fuller several moments-looking humble, his entire body saying,
Please, please, I don’t deserve all this; wonderful and special and godlike as I am, I am just like you, just another human being, well, maybe just a wee bit more wonderful and special and godlike than you, I guess, I have to humbly admit
-it took him several minutes before he finally calmed the crowd and spoke.

    “I was saying to the conductor as we were pulling in, ‘I believe this is the prettiest town in the whole state,’ and he said ‘Yessir, I believe it is.’ ”

    Raptured applause.

    “And I’ll tell you something else your beautiful town is and that’s lucky-lucky to have two men as devoted to Skylar as they are to their own families. And I’m talking about the men on either side of me at this very moment.” He introduced them. They looked like children who’d just been given a gold eagle to spend on candy.

    “And something else that conductor told me. He said that my friends here-these very two men next to me-were the only ones brave enough to stand up to a town marshal whose wife may or may not have something to do with a very unseemly murder. The conductor told me that not everybody was happy When these two gentlemen forced him to resign-but that they stood their ground and are now in the process of finding his wife.”

    The applause wasn’t rapturous this time, but it was solid. And it inspired a hundred arrow-perfect glances back at me where I stood near the rear of the depot.

    “You know what we call that kind of courage in the state capitol, don’t you? We call it leadership. The courage to do the right thing even when it’s not always popular. The courage to stand up-even if you have to stand up alone- and say that what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. That’s leadership, as I say.

    “And I say one more thing. Your district will have two open seats in the state legislature next session. And I can’t think of two more qualified public servants than these two gentlemen to fill those seats!”

    The band conductor-who had no doubt been silently cued from the caboose platform by Grice or Toomey - broke into another patriotic medley. There was confetti. There was rapturous applause again. I’d been expecting the political push for Grice and Toomey to come later. But he’d probably been asked by Grice and Toomey to make it right away before the crowd started getting tired of the heat and began drifting away.

    And then I saw them.

    They drove the fanciest surrey of all. And came late, as always. Lateness signified their importance. Courtesy wasn’t necessary when you were among the elite. You ran on your schedule, not anybody else’s.

    Laura Webley, in a summery yellow frock with a vast straw picture hat tied under her chin with a matching yellow ribbon, stepped down from the surrey with storybook grace. Any number of men in the crowd, much to the displeasure of frowning wives, turned to where the surrey had parked very near the tracks-nobody else had been allowed to park this close-and where Laura was making her first public appearance of the day.